


Radix

by Decipher (Straggler)



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Because of course he does, Because you know how Connor works, Canon-Typical Violence, Connor Deserves Happiness, Gen, Hank Anderson Deserves Happiness, Hank Anderson Swears, How Do I Tag, Post-Game, Post-Pacifist, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:01:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26169124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Straggler/pseuds/Decipher
Summary: He sighs, feeling exhausted as he pinches the bridge of his nose. His knuckles are hurting again. 'What do you want, Kamski,' he asks one more time in hopes of getting the man out of his house faster.'I was able to requisition this android before it was taken away,' Kamski says as he breezes past Hank towards the black duffel bag and unzips it, revealing an android with a hole in their cranium and blue blood staining their brunet hair, pale face and ruined suit. 'Repair it.'(This story was written with the idea that Hank Anderson has some background knowledge on androids and how they function. This also follows after Connor sacrificed himself at the end of the revolution to stop himself from shooting Markus.)
Relationships: Hank Anderson & Connor
Comments: 10
Kudos: 59





	Radix

**Author's Note:**

> I feel like I should try and explore the other characters of the DBH fandom but...I enjoyed Hank's and Connor's part of the game a lot more than the others. Although, not gonna lie, my mind was totally blown when I found out Alice was an android and I was like, !?!?!?! BRO!!! -screaMING-

  
His knuckles still hurt but damn was it worth the month-long suspension for punching that face in. Hank's still pissed that Perkins came in and stole all his hard work and then took all the credit for it even though he was the one that found the damn HK400 hiding out in the attic and chased down that WB200 across rooftops. He almost went into cardiac arrest for that one but he got the job done, at least, unlike the freeloading FBI.

All he needed was a little bit more time then he would've been able to crack the case wide open.

'Piece of shit,' he glares as he drinks his beer, scowling at the replay of the agent that's showing up on TV via helicopter coverage trying to negotiate something with the leader of the deviants. It's old news by this point; President Warren has already issued a ceasefire but he's only just managed to catch himself up on all the events leading up to the android protest in Hart Plaza. Being busy with work didn't leave him much time to keep up-to-date with current events; he barely had enough time to eat, sleep and look after Sumo before he was diving back into the fray of trying to solve multiple cases mashed into one gigantic conundrum. 

Beside him, the saint bernard huffs and lays his head more comfortably over Hank's lap, begging his attention. He obliges and scratches behind the dog's ears, running his fingers along his fur from his head down to his back in a repetitive motion.

On the TV, the news cycles back to a replay of President Warren's speech following the truce and decides he's had enough for one night. He shifts Sumo's head off his lap to lie on the couch cushions instead and gets up to get himself ready for bed, picking up the three empty beer bottles he left on the table to leave in the kitchen to toss out with the rest of the recycling tomorrow morning.

He's in the middle of brushing his teeth when he hears his doorbell go off and Sumo barking, the dog's nails clacking across the floorboards noisily. Hank quickly spits out the toothpaste, gives his mouth and beard a hasty rinse before heading to the front door, peering through the peephole to see who his late night visitor is. He frowns at the man standing on his stoop, someone he hasn't seen in well over 10 years. He pulls his dog back by the collar as he opens the door and stares, bewildered.

'Kamski?'

Blue eyes stare into his as the corner of Kamski's lips quirk up in a facsimile of a smile. 'Mr. Anderson, or should I say Lieutenant Anderson. Quite the career shift you've found yourself in.'

He lets out a bark of laughter, 'Yeah, well, imagine my fucking surprise when my job application got accepted at CyberLife when I was just a beat-cop on the streets.'

'Your proposal piqued my interest.' 

'What d'ya want?'

'May I come in?'

'You sure? You might not like what you find; it's not exactly a 5-star hotel,' Hank notices a large black duffel bag at the man's feet that looks extremely out of place next to them and he doesn't want to imagine what might be in there as he opens the door wider, 'Hope you don't mind having dog hair on your clothes when you leave.'

'I'm sure I'll manage,' Kamski says as he picks up the black bag and brings it inside with him and sets it on the floor by the corridor leading further into the house.

He shoves Sumo back into the living room as he closes the door behind him and scratches his head, wondering what Kamski is doing here when they've not spoken to one another in 10 years. It's not as if they've even tried to keep in contact with each other in all that time, either, what with them belonging to two totally different worlds. He's thinking about whether or not to offer the man a beer or something else to drink when Kamski wanders into his kitchen and picks up the photo frame he'd left face down on the table.

'Don't!' He shouts, eliciting a bark of surprise from Sumo but it's too late.

'You keep a photo of your android?'

Hank scowls, 'His name is Cole, and yeah, I do. What d'ya want?' He repeats himself a touch impatiently as he stalks over and grabs the picture away from Kamski's fingers.

'You bear a grudge against CyberLife even now, 9 years later.'

'Seriously, Kamski. I'm not gonna ask again; what do you want.'

He should've known Kamski wasn't going to listen or take the thinly veiled threat as actual warning. 'You knew working for CyberLife means to forfeit any intellectual property regarding androids created during your employment.'

He snaps, 'Cole was mine! And they took him apart to make him into a YK400 model for mass production!'

'Your attachment to your first creation is unfortunate,' Kamski sighs, seemingly bored as his eyes begin to scan and observe the rest of his house.

Hank scoffs, feeling irritation build up in his chest, 'Like you're one to talk; you're just as attached to Chloe as I am to Cole.'

The man gives a smooth shrug of his shoulders as he holds his hands behind his back, somehow standing straighter and taller than he'd been before, 'True, I suppose. Although her likeness is shared amongst many other android models, there is only one of her.'

'You get to keep your creation. I didn't get the choice.'

Kamski's eyes turn back towards Hank and there's something in them that unnerves him, like he knows a secret and enjoys dangling it just out of reach. 'The perks of being CEO.'

He sighs, feeling exhausted as he pinches the bridge of his nose. His knuckles are hurting again. 'What do you want, Kamski,' he asks one more time in hopes of getting the man out of his house faster.

'I was able to requisition this android before it was taken away,' Kamski says as he breezes past Hank towards the black duffel bag and unzips it, revealing an android with a hole in their cranium and blue blood staining their brunet hair, pale face and ruined suit. 'Repair it.'

He balks, 'Holy shit, you just shoved them in there?' The bag isn't exactly small but the android is still folded up awkwardly to fit into the space.

Kamski straightens up from his slight crouch and peers down at the android, unaffected by the sight, 'The RK800 was retrieved like this. I didn't have the time nor the inclination to bother otherwise. At this stage, it's a deactivated android and it feels no discomfort at being treated in such a manner.'

He huffs and decides that's a fair point. 'You can't do it yourself? In case you haven't noticed, that's not my day job anymore.'

The man gives a bored sigh as he tugs on the sleeves of his suit jacket and brushes off some dog hair that's floated down onto his clothes even though he went nowhere near the saint bernard. 'I'm a busy man, trying to take back my company and undo the damages done to its name as well as mine.'

Hank scoffs, 'Yeah, good luck with that. You'll be trying to undo 10 years worth of shit.'

'I'm sure with some restructuring I'll be able to turn it around within a few months,' a smirk appears over Kamski's face as he turns his eyes back towards him and this one reminds him of the look Kamski used to get on his face before he needs to head off to a board meeting with some executives. Like a predator about to go into a room full of prey that's ready to throw themselves at his feet to appease his insatiable appetite for success. 'Perhaps you'll like your position back.'

'Pass,' he says with a roll of his eyes, knowing the man is just trying to goad a reaction out of him. 'I'll try and fix the android but no promises.' He doesn't think he'll even manage to get very far; there's a hole in their skull but he knows Kamski wouldn't waste his time bringing the android here in the first place if he didn't think they were repairable. 

'Try is all I ask.'

'Before I start, what can you tell me about the android?' He asks as he goes over to pick up the bag, grunting a little bit at the weight. Kamski made it look like it barely weighed anything at all.

'CyberLife gifted the RK800 prototype to the FBI to help with the deviancy case.'

'Ah, that android I saw following Perkins around,' he remembers as he hauls the bag down the hallway towards his garage, opening the door and shivering a little at the cold air inside the half-storage, half-workshop space.

'Yes. Fascinating, isn't it? CyberLife's last chance to save humanity was itself a deviant.'

Hank almost drops the bag forcefully onto the low table as he turns around to the other, 'You telling me they turned into a deviant?'

'It turned against the FBI during the Jericho raid and succeeded in helping to lead the revolution. CyberLife attempted to take back control of it,' he says as he casts his eyes around the garage, staring at the boxes and eventually settling on the disorganized pegboard tool holder. 'The RK800 chose to sacrifice itself to ensure the revolution's victory.'

Hank lets out a low whistle as he stares at the face of the android that killed themselves so that others would survive. 'Damn,' he shakes his head in mild surprise. He didn't see anything like that on the news replay, but he wondered if they censored it on purpose.

'For a man who is supposedly in the thick of it, you seem to know very little of the current events of the past week.'

'I've been busy,' he grumbles and starts shooing Kamski out of his house, leading him back through the hallway to the front door. 

'As have I. I'll leave you to it, then,' he says and disappears as suddenly as he came.

Hank frowns as he stares at the open garage door, knowing he won't be able to sleep with this kind of puzzle shoved right under his nose. He reluctantly goes back into the converted work space and pulls the android out of the bag, laying them out onto the table properly. Their suit is a wrinkled mess and there's blue blood smeared everywhere, although he figures some of it has already faded away.

He starts digging through his boxes, trying to unearth the one where he kept the tools he bought specifically for his old job at CyberLife. He eventually roots out a data pad and a connecting cable, hoping they're still compatible as he tries to sync up with the android.

A list of errors longer than his whole body appears on the screen and the sight of the technical jargon he hasn't had to use or think about in almost a decade makes his head spin. He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, 'Come on, it's just like riding a bike,' he tells himself as he goes back to the top of the list to make sense of what he's reading.

It takes a while but he eventually figures out the main problem is the central processing unit which, with some time and a lot of elbow grease, can be repaired. He has to dig through some other boxes to find the specific tools he requires and hopes his hands can still handle the kind of steady work he'll need to reconstruct the delicate wiring of what is essentially the brain.

'Fuck, you really did a number on yourself,' he mutters as he lines his tools up for tomorrow morning, knowing he won't have the energy to start anything tonight especially with his knuckles still smarting.

Despite being tired, it takes him a long time to go to sleep.

\--

He's rusty. He knew it the second he took the face plate off to stare at all the severed pieces of wiring and the tacky thirium coating the insides of the skull, still leaking from some open lines. His hands shake at the prospect of such a huge undertaking but he's not gonna back down from this obvious challenge. He doesn't owe Kamski anything but damn if he isn't gonna try and wrangle a good bottle of whiskey from the multi-millionaire as payment.

But it's been 9 years; he hasn't worked on an android since Cole and even then, a lot of things have changed. He doesn't know if it's the RK800 specifically or if android production have just gotten more complicated since he left CyberLife. Either way, it takes him practically the whole damn day to even get one small line of error to disappear from the data pad.

'Fucking hell, one down, only a million left to go,' he grumbles, remembering Cole hadn't been this difficult to put together back then, and that was when he had to make almost everything from scratch to fit inside his tiny body. He frowns and decides to stop there.

He's thought of Cole almost every single day since he left CyberLife but it's been a long time since he's wanted to drink his body weight in alcohol to forget the pain and to curb the anger of what CyberLife took away from him. It's been 9 years but it still feels as if the betrayal is new and fresh.

The next day sees a little more results but still nowhere near to finishing. He's glad he didn't ask Kamski if he wanted the android fixed within a specific time frame. At the rate he's going, he thinks it could take upwards to a month, maybe even longer once his suspension is over and he'll have to squeeze in repairs into whatever spare time he's got once he's done with working cases.

Hank really can't figure out why Kamski can't just fix the android themselves; they'd probably get it done within a couple of days, maybe even within a few hours if he's motivated enough. As it is, Hank feels his hair turning whiter every time he does something wrong that wrecks the good work he's done so far. He's frustrated with himself that he's not as good at he used to be even though he tells himself it's been 9 long years since he picked up a tool used specifically for the production and/or maintenance of an android.

He sighs and decides to take a break for a while except it's nearly 10PM and he hasn't had dinner yet.

'Fuck, no wonder I'm hangry,' he grumbles to himself as he goes to heat up a microwave meal. Sumo comes up next to him as he's popping the cap off a bottle of beer, the dog panting and nudging his head onto Hank's thigh, begging for attention. 'Hey, boy, looks like you're hungry, too,' he smiles as he rubs a hand along the fur from head to tail. He plays with the saint bernard until the microwave is done then goes to refill Sumo's food and water bowl before sitting down to some dry roast beef with dry mashed potatoes and tasteless peas and carrots, washing every mouthful down with a gulp of beer.

The doorbell rings when he's halfway through dinner, making Sumo bark in reply, and he hopes it's not Kamski; he's not even 10% of the way done with repairing the android. When he looks through the peephole, he's pleased to see another familiar face accompanying Kamski.

'Chloe,' he says with a quirk of his lips as he opens the door, willfully ignoring the man behind her.

'Hank, it's wonderful to see you again,' she smiles, and she hasn't changed a bit since he last saw her. He doesn't know why he's surprised; he knows she's an android and androids don't age. Still, he can't help the feeling of nostalgia upon seeing her.

'Long time no see. Kamski been treating you right?' He asks as he lets them come inside, pulling Sumo away before he gets too close and personal with the guests. He's glad shes wearing a long coat even though he knows androids don't really feel the cold the same way as humans do.

'As always.'

'Good,' he says as he pats Sumo and firmly pushes him back into the living room, picking up a nearby toy and throwing it onto his dog bed in hopes it might distract the saint bernard for a decent amount of time. It's usually a hit and miss but tonight, it works. 'Sorry, you caught me in the middle of dinner.'

'But it's 10 o'clock.'

He shrugs as he sits back down and continues eating his pitiful looking meal, 'Lost track of time trying to fix your android,' he says as he points a fork in Kamski's direction, finally acknowledging the other presence in the room.

'So, what you mean to say is that it's still not fully repaired?' He asks as he looks down the hallway where the garage is, probably seeing the android still laid out on the work table with their face plate taken off. He would've closed the door if he knew he was gonna get surprise visitors so late in the night.

'Not everybody's a genius, Kamski,' he doesn't quite snap, trying to hold back his temper because of Chloe, 'I'm nearly double your age, asshole; watch yourself.'

'You were one of my best technicians back at CyberLife,' Kamski says as he turns his full attention back to Hank.

'The android was shot in the head, Kamski; they blew their fucking brains out! I'm not a miracle worker.' He almost shouts as he raises his hands into the air, accidentally flinging a pea off the tines of his fork. He'll clean it up later if Sumo doesn't get to it first. 'I'm damn lucky they didn't blow out their memory core,' he finishes in a grumble, stabbing the rest of his dinner and trying to work up the will to actually finish his food. 'And you're wrong. I wasn't your best technician; I was just the only technician that didn't suck up to you.'

'People who grovel bore me.'

He snorts, 'Boo-hoo, sucks to be you,' he says, rolling his eyes as he shoves the last forkful of mashed potatoes into his mouth and washes it down with more beer. 'I'll call you when the android's fixed, alright? Save you the unnecessary trip.'

'Chloe wanted to see you.'

And they both turn towards the girl who's kneeling down next to the saint bernard, the dog panting happily and blissed out at the attention he's being given by a pretty lady. Hank guffaws and shakes his head at the sight. 

'Well, in the case, come by anytime you want. Sumo's probably sick of seeing my ugly mug anyway,' he smiles as he throws the last of his microwave dinner into the bin and tells himself never to buy the 'classic Sunday roast' dinner ever again.

\---

He finds the more he works on the android, the better he gets. His hands grow steady with confidence and he remembers to avoid making silly mistakes from before, becoming more efficient as the minutes turn to hours turn to days.

Hank doesn't know why Kamski wants the android fixed, but he figures if it was really important then he would've done it himself instead of leaving them with Hank to slowly blunder his way through the repairs. It's been 3 days since Kamski and Chloe's late night visit and he's pleased to see that he's at least a quarter of the way done, much quicker than his initial estimate, although he knows he's nowhere near his previous speed. 

Sumo comes up to the door going into the garage and sits right on the boundary huffing at him for attention. He chuckles at the sight and decides it's a good time to take a break to feed the both of them.

'Alright, come on, boy,' he says with a slight grunt as he gets up from having been stuck in a sitting position for the better part of a few hours, his grin widening at the answering bark.

Hank eventually digs up the footage of the RK800 killing themselves and understands why it's not shown on TV. He regrets watching this while he's trying to eat lunch but can't tear his eyes away from the video clip on his phone. The android is standing on the stage with a few others of their kind, sees the moment they fight against an unseen force controlling them, pulling out the gun from their holster and bringing it up, up, up until it's shakily resting under their jaw. There's a look of fury and anguish on their face, an internal struggle of knowing they can't fight back or win against whatever's inside of them before they pull the trigger, ending it all.

He sighs, figures he's had enough of the cordon bleu that's so dry that it's basically one step away from being desiccated and chucks it out into the trash.

As he walks out of the kitchen and turns his head towards the open garage door, he can see the android laid out on the table. He wonders now if it's such a good idea to bring them back when the last thing they did was blow their brains out. He's not sure how they'd react to being woken up after having gone through that kind of experience.

He frowns as he goes to slip on his jacket and grab the leash from the door knob, whistling for Sumo so they can get a bit of fresh air for a little while.

There has to be a reason why Kamski wants the android fixed, and his mind starts whirring with potential ideas of what that might entail. He wonders if Kamski wants to question them on the choices they made after they became deviant. But the more he turns that thought over, the more he dismisses it and knows it can't be the case; if Kamski really wanted information from the android a quick look into their memory core would've answered whatever questions they've got.

Maybe Kamski wants to figure out the cause of deviancy as well, a puzzle piece to be solved that CyberLife left unattended for too long in his absence and couldn't manage to keep under control. He knows Kamski likes being one or several steps ahead of the curve to show that, even after he's left the position of CEO, he is still more than capable of troubleshooting any problems that might crop up. After all, androids are his creation.

Hank never quite cracked through the deviancy cases before his work got stolen from right under his nose by Perkins but he remembers that the longer he'd worked on it, the more it seemed like he was looking at it from the wrong point of view. If the androids he caught were human then the HK400 would've been a victim of domestic abuse while the WB200 was just a weirdo who liked to live with birds over the company of other people.

He doesn't know what's happened to those androids now but figures they're probably somewhere in the archives of whatever building the FBI like to hole themselves up in.

He lets out a long tired sigh as he starts pulling Sumo to head back home, making sure to clean up after his dog to throw into the next bin he sees.

When they get back home, the saint bernard immediately goes to lap up some water before going back into the living room to flop onto the couch. Hank heads back into the garage and stares down at the frayed wires that still need fixing, the plastic face plate that needs remolding and the thirium that needs replenishing. There's a lot of work left to do so he knuckles down and gets back into it.

He's not sure what Kamski really wants with the android but a part of him is curious to find out, too.

\---

Through sheer force of will, a short visit to a CyberLife shop and a lot of sleepless nights later he manages to complete all of the repairs after another week and a half. He checks the data pad running a final diagnostics scan on the android before making a call to let Kamski know they're fixed.

'Bet you regret handing them off to me, huh,' he grins with a little too much teeth as he puts the data pad down by the android and walks back into the main part of the house with the phone next to his ear.

'You did better than I expected. I estimated 3 weeks and you managed in just under 2 and a half.'

'Fuck you, Kamski,' he growls halfheartedly. He knew it'd been a test but it's another thing to have it confirmed. 'You coming over to pick them up, or what?' He asks as he pats Sumo's head on the way into the kitchen, pulling out a bottle of beer to reward himself with.

'We'll be there within the hour,' he says and immediately hangs up without another word.

Hank scoffs as he slides his phone onto the coffee table, picking up the remote control to switch on the TV as he sits down, tuning in a little bit on the report of how Elijah Kamski has been reappointed the CEO of CyberLife again, making several changes after being reinstated. Sumo climbs up next to him and flops onto his lap and Hank puts down his beer to oblige the dog with ear scratches as he shifts over to another channel talking about how deviancy is going to affect the whole world. He skips it when he hears it's largely people complaining about their first-world problems of losing out on something that had been created to serve them in the first place. Eventually he lands on a channel that's got President Warren and Android Activist Markus discussing laws that would help protect androids to give them basic human rights.

Barely 15 minutes of listening to the debates have passed before his doorbell is rung, waking Sumo up from his light doze as the dog scrambles off towards the door. Hank grunts as he gets up from the couch and ambles his way there, grabbing onto the saint bernard's collar to hold him back as he turns the locks.

'You got here quick,' he says in greeting as he holds the door open to let them in, shushing Sumo when he starts barking excitedly.

Kamski doesn't even say anything to him, just disappears down the hallway straight into the garage as if he owns the damn house. Hank rolls his eyes and pushes Sumo back into the living room before following after Chloe.

The data pad that he'd left beside the android is now in Kamski's hands and he scrolls through it, scanning the screen with a quick eye. It's not long before he reactivates them with a flick of his hand across the data pad.

'Amanda!' The android shouts as they bolt up from their prone position, their LED burning bright red at their temple, scaring the shit out of Hank and getting rapid barks from Sumo. He quickly goes to calm his dog and his heart down from that unexpected surprise and wonders why the hell the android would know about Kamski's old and very dead mentor who died a couple of years before he quit CyberLife.

'RK800, run diagnostics,' Kamski tells the android, looking bored and unaffected by the yell and the name of his mentor.

'RK800 prototype Connor model, serial number 313 248 317. Biocomponents okay, biosensors okay, AI engine okay, memory status okay. I am fully functional,' they reply by rote as they stare into the middle distance, as if seeing something beyond the walls of his garage. 'Why am I here?' They ask and finally look towards them when Hank joins back into the garage and focuses in on Chloe with wide eyes, their LED shifting between yellow and red repeatedly, 'You're...alive?'

'Yes,' she replies simply, 'Elijah had me repaired within a few hours of you shooting me.'

Hank turns to Chloe, looking at her up and down as if he can see where she was shot but knows Kamski would be too meticulous to have left any evidence behind to show that she'd been damaged in the first place. 

'I'm sorry,' the android apologizes, their eyebrows furrowing as their gaze drops down to the ground.

'Agent Perkins ordered it of you. I do not hold a grudge for that,' she tells them and Hank can't help but roll his eyes, finding himself glad that he got to throw a punch in that guy's smarmy face after all.

'I'm still sorry.'

It's at this point Kamski decides to cut in again, eyes back onto the data pad that's still connected to the back of the android's neck, gathering information for him to read through. 'What was your directive?'

'To assist the FBI in the investigations regarding the phenomenon known as deviancy among androids,' they repeat again as if reading from a manual, expression blanking out into neutral territory.

'You reasserted control of your functions prior to your deactivation.'

The android frowns, 'No, I didn't. I barely managed to pull the trigger before they could use me to further their means. The death of one android is preferable to the deaths of many,' they say as they slowly bring a hand up to the underside of their jaw, lightly touching the place where the bullet hole would've entered them. 'I removed myself from the equation before I undid all of Markus' hard work to free us. I was stupid...' they force out through gritted teeth, wrapping their arms around themselves, 'I should've guessed they were using me.'

Hank hates seeing them this way, talking themselves down as if they had any choice in the matter, as if they hadn't made one of the hardest decisions a person would ever have to make in their entire lives. 'You know, if you hadn't gotten those other androids out from the warehouses following you that night, the revolution probably wouldn't have had much ground to gain.'

Their head snaps up at his voice, LED shifting to blink a steady yellow, and brown eyes bore into his first in shock and then slowly in recognition. 'You're Hank Anderson, former CyberLife employee. You created Cole, the basis for the YK400 and YK500 child android models.'

'Yeah...' he says slowly as his eyes skip away from them, bringing up a hand to scratch at his beard to distract himself with, 'And I'd prefer if you didn't bring up his name.'

'I--'

'Fascinating,' Kamski breathes as he stares down at the data pad with something resembling interest in his eyes, 'It seems you were created for the sole purpose to deviate,' he says without even looking up at the android.

'Yes, I was told by Amanda that I was created with the possibility to become deviant in order to ingratiate myself amongst the core members of Jericho as their sleeper agent,' they say lowly as their arms wrap around themselves more firmly, their fingers closing tightly over the material of the sleeves.

'I wonder how it is you managed to go against your programming without having known about the emergency exit.'

'Emergency exit?' The android asks, straightening up a little bit with the question.

Kamski hums as he disconnects the cable from the data pad and starts to walk away with it, 'I've no further use for the RK800. Come, Chloe.'

'Of course, Elijah.'

Hank gets in their way, barricading the door with his body, 'Wait, wait, wait. This isn't a halfway house for the wayward android, okay? I fixed them for you, you can take them back.'

'Thank you for your assistance, Hank. I'll be sure to compensate you for your time and efforts,' he says as he lays a deceptively light hand on his shoulder, pushing him back down the hallway far enough to let him slip by.

'Wait a minute!' He yells as he starts to stalk after him but Chloe gently lays a hand on his arm, barely holding him back and she damn well knows he won't do anything to her. He rolls his eyes and shoos her out with Kamski, 'Fine, fine. Whatever.'

'Thank you for your help, Hank,' she smiles and closes the door after her.

Sumo whines at their departure and Hank sighs as he brings a hand up to pinch at the bridge of his nose. He should've known Kamski would saddle him with the android.

He scratches the back of his head as he turns around and sees the android standing by the work table, their LED still cycling on yellow, arms still wrapped around them, looking small and unsure. 'Well, uh...I don't know,' he says in reply to an unasked question, 'Should I drop you off to your friends back at...whatever?'

The android makes a face caught between a look of panic and a grimace, 'No, that...does not seem like a wise decision. CyberLife might attempt to take control of me again if I go near Markus.'

'CyberLife is back to being run by Kamski and I fucking doubt he'd do anything like that,' he says and notices the cable still connected to the back of the android's neck. He makes a quick gesture to point it out and watches them carefully disconnect it with a wince. 'Kamski is kinda fucking eccentric as shit but he's not a bad guy.'

The RK800 shakes their head at this. 'Amanda runs independently from CyberLife. Her last directive had been to assert control over me and, if given the chance, regardless of whether CyberLife approves it or not, she will continue to follow her last command.'

'Who the fuck is Amanda?' Hank finally decides to ask as he takes the cable from them and stores it inside a nearby storage container with the rest of his tools. 'The only Amanda I know that worked in CyberLife died over a decade ago.'

'She's an A.I. designed by Elijah Kamski that bears the same likeness of his late mentor, Amanda Stern.'

'Right, got it,' he mutters as he closes up the storage box and tucks it in the free space under the work table, pursing his lips and wondering what he's gonna do with the android. 'Okay, look, it's getting late. You can stay here for the night and leave in the morning, whatever,' he says as he gestures for the android to get out of his garage so he can switch off the lights and close the door behind them. 'Couch is occupied by Sumo but I'm sure he'll be happy sharing with you.'

'I--' the android starts and stops, shaking their head once, their LED shifting back down to blue as they stand in the middle of the kitchen while Hank goes to pull out the bottle of whiskey from the cupboard. 'When I was working for the FBI, it has been noted that I was a valuable asset to them during the investigation. Perhaps I can do the same for you and the DPD.'

He lets out a bark of laughter, 'Sorry, but I'm not exactly in a good position with Jeff to be calling in favors,' he smirks as he unscrews the bottle and grabs a glass, pouring himself a generous serving. His split knuckles have already healed over but there's still a little tenderness whenever he flexes them. It probably didn't help that he'd been spending all hours of the last couple of weeks trying to repair the android. 'You want a job at the DPD, take it up with the Captain. Although I've no idea how that's gonna work now with androids being alive and all that. I can't imagine the kind of bureaucratic bullshit that's gonna come with salaries and back pay for the androids that worked with us.'

'I understand. Thank you for your hospitality.'

'It's only for one night!' He quickly throws in before he ends up with a semi-permanent freeloader. He puts the whiskey bottle away and sits down at the dining table, noticing the slight hesitation from the RK800 before they pull out the chair opposite him and takes a seat as well.

'Can I ask you a personal question, Lieutenant?'

He groans. He was hoping to spend the rest of the night in relative silence but he guesses he owes it to the android to at least try and be a somewhat decent host. 'What d'ya wanna know?'

The android pauses, looking at the photo frame that's lying face down on the table for a brief moment before turning their eyes back to Hank's. 'You had a lucrative position within CyberLife as one of their technicians, not to mention you seem to have quite a bond with Elijah Kamski that I imagine many people would've envied. Why did you leave?'

He snorts as he brings the glass up to his lips again, taking in a good mouthful and swallowing it down, enjoying the taste and burn of it. 'What, that's not in their database? I figured you'd be able to find that out on your own.'

'Perhaps it is, but it seems preferable to ask rather than search for the answers myself.'

'Huh,' he says a bit dumbly, feeling weirdly appreciative at their consideration. 'Well, easy answer is that I didn't like the direction they started going after Kamski left but I stuck with it anyway because of a personal project that I didn't want anybody else touching,' he frowns as he peers down at his glass and thinks he should've poured himself some more. 'Told myself I'll never involve myself with androids ever again but lo and behold here you are, asking me personal questions,' he can't help but bite back as he throws back the last mouthful of whiskey and smacks his lips to chase the last droplets of it.

'You seem very uncomfortable by my being here,' the android points out obviously, 'At first I assumed it was because of your history with CyberLife and androids in general but you appear to have a good rapport with Chloe.'

'I've known Chloe through my entire stint at CyberLife. She's a good girl; takes a lot to deal with Kamski,' he grunts as he gets up from the table and sets the empty glass into the sink and then going over to pick up Sumo's half-empty water bowl to fill it up with fresh water. 'You got anymore personal questions you wanna bug me with?' He asks semi-rhetorically as he puts the bowl back down and watches the saint bernard toddle over to drink out of it. 

When he looks back to the android he finds brown eyes looking at him with intent, the uncertainty from earlier gone from them as they turn in their chair and stand to face Hank. Suddenly he's got a bad feeling he's not gonna like whatever's gonna come out of their mouth next.

'...I remember you.'

He balks a little at that. 'How. I haven't set foot in CyberLife in over 9 years and I was definitely not part of the RK series.' That had been Kamski's personal project before he retired from the job.

'Some of the functions you gave...that were used in the YK models were brought over into my model.'

'What kinda functions,' he asks, because he really doubts that functions he created for Cole would be in anyway useful to a prototype of their caliber.

The RK800 straightens as they begin to reply in rote, 'Emotions, as part of my social relations program to better assist me with building relationships with humans. Sensitivity to hot and cold environments that acts as an advanced warning to prevent data loss and catastrophic system failure. Curiosity, to--'

'Yeah, I got it,' he grumbles and stops them there, 'Still doesn't answer the question of how you remember me.'

'Some of your work was used to create me.'

'Yeah, you said that. And?' He says a touch impatiently.

The android's eyes flits away for a moment, looking down at the table before bringing it back to Hank. 'You created Cole...and Cole was used to create me.'

'Fuck, okay, I'm done,' he says through gritted teeth as he throws his hands up into the air and stalks out of the kitchen.

'Wait!'

'No! Just drop it!' He shouts at the android as he turns on his heels to point at them. 'I left CyberLife for a fucking reason. It's 9 years behind me and I'm happy that way. Got it?'

The android looks frozen on the spot but it eventually gives a slow nod, their LED pulsing yellow as they answer him. '...Got it.'

Hank leaves the android on their own as he goes into the bathroom to get ready for bed, standing in front of the mirror with all his post-it notes staring right back at him. He's in a poor mood but he can't resist adding in a new note to throw in with the others, this one saying, "Still got it!" written proudly for his achievement of being able to repair an android even though he's 9 years out of practice. Seeing it on the mirror makes him feel a little bit better about himself as he brushes his teeth.

He leaves his bedroom door open as he slips into bed, sees the lights still on in the kitchen and living room. He frowns and wonders if he should get out of bed to switch them all off or just leave them on for the android so they're not just sitting in the dark. In the end the lights get turned off one by one until the only ones left are the streetlamps just peeking through the closed blinds of his bedroom window.

He hears Sumo huff from somewhere beyond his door, then the creak of the couch springs, before silence settles over his house.

\---

Hank doesn't remember he's got an extra house guest living under his roof until he turns the corner leading into the kitchen and stops dead at the sight of the android looking at the picture of Cole he left on the dining table from the night before.

He doesn't like it but he doesn't like it even more when he sees the android changing his eye color back and forth between brown and green, and their hair shifting between shades of brown. The sight makes something ugly churn in his gut as he snaps at them, 'The fuck are you doing,' he growls as he stalks forward to forcefully yank the photo of Cole from their hands, uncaring for the way he startled the android.

'I'm sor--'

'Shut up,' he warns, outraged as he shoves the photo into the nearest drawer and starts to push the android towards the door, more than ready for them to leave his house. He slams the door after them, eliciting a bark from Sumo at the loud noise, scrambling off the couch to join him.

He groans, realizing that he still needs to take his dog out for his morning walk and will inevitably end up crossing paths with the android again anyway. Hank sighs, already wishing for the day to end as he grabs the leash hanging off the doorknob and clips it onto Sumo's collar before slipping into the nearest pair of shoes.

The android is standing out on his front lawn, head turned towards them with an expression that borders on apologetic and hopeful which Hank does his best to ignore as he tugs on the leash and starts walking, unsurprised when he hears footsteps trailing after him.

He takes Sumo to the small grassy bit of land a couple of blocks away dotted with a couple of trees and a lonely double swing set that tries to pass itself off as a park but just makes Hank feel sad every time he looks at it. The saint bernard starts pulling at the leash as he heads towards his favorite tree to go about his business. He holds onto the dog's collar to unhook the leash, letting Sumo start his ritual of sniffing around the base of a tree a few of times before taking a piss on one side and then a dump on the other.

He notices the RK800 walking past him to go towards the swings, tentatively touching the chain links as it moves to a gentle breeze. He watches them take a seat on one of them, their long legs pushing them back and forth idly.

Hank forces himself to look away to clean up after Sumo, clip the leash back on and start their journey back home.

No footsteps follow after him this time.

\---

There's a week and a half to his suspension left and without a broken android to occupy his time with, he's left twiddling his thumbs waiting for something to happen. He's surprised Jeff hasn't called him back already considering how understaffed they must be now with the evacuation and all of the police androids having up and left. Petty crimes must be through the roof with empty houses and apartments from people fleeing Detroit in a panic, leaving almost all of their worldly possessions behind, ripe for the picking.

He considers biting the bullet and making a call to Jeff to grovel into letting him come back just so he can at least get his outstanding paperwork done when the doorbell rings, snapping his attention away from the baseball replay that's on TV. He frowns at the door and half-hopes it's not Kamski coming back with another broken android for him to fix.

A look through the peephole disappoints him.

'What d'ya want,' he asks as he opens the door to the guy standing outside.

'Delivery for Hank Anderson?' The man says as he holds up a data pad in one hand before spinning it around to face him. '115 Michigan Drive, Detroit. Sign here, please.'

'I'm not expecting anything,' he grumbles as he eyes the thin package tucked under the guy's arm as he takes the data pad and scans the screen. It's from Kamski and he can't help rolling his eyes as he pulls out the stylus from the side of the data pad and signs it off. 'Thanks.'

'You're welcome. Have a good day, sir,' he says with a flat smile as he hands over the package and takes back the data pad and stylus before going back towards his truck.

'Yeah, you too,' he mumbles absentmindedly as he rips open the package and closes the door behind him, getting a huff from Sumo as he comes up with his tail wagging, expecting treats from whatever's inside the thin box.

Turns out to be just another data pad. The same one that Kamski took with him from the other night. He snorts and goes to return it into the storage box under the work table in the garage.

There's a note inside the box as well, just a generic card that reads, "With regards, Elijah Kamski, CEO of CyberLife." He snorts again as he flips it over to see if there's anything on the otherwise and is surprised to find an actual handwritten note from him.

_I'm sure you know this data pad is technically property of CyberLife but seeing as I was no longer CEO of the company at the time of your resignation I've decided to turn a blind eye to this thievery. You have also been summarily paid for your services._

Hank lets out another bark of laughter at the note, chortling down at Sumo when he gets excited and barks along with him, tail wagging as he sits back on his haunches right by his feet. He gives in and gets the saint bernard a treat for his patience anyway. 

He throws out the box to go into the recycle but sticks the note onto his fridge using a magnet, chuckling at the audacity of his former boss. He shouldn't be surprised by him at the point.

The next couple of days are spent loafing around the house for lack of anything better to do. He watches a lot of TV, walks Sumo twice a day, goes out shopping at one point telling himself he's going to cook some actual food only to default back into easy ready-made meals and a lot of alcohol. His doctor would probably hate him for this if he could actually be bothered going to see them more than what's mandated by the DPD.

He treats Sumo with a lot more care and attention than he does for himself so he figures that's gotta count for something.

There's only a week left to his suspension and he's eagerly counting down the days until he can rock on back up to work. As he's getting ready for bed and brushing his teeth, he absentmindedly reads all of the post-it notes he left stuck on and around the bathroom mirror. 

SHAVING OR NOT

I'm not GRUMPY I just don't like YOU

Keep Smiling

Today will be Fabulous

Still got it!

For the millionth time in as many years, he feels like he should throw the ones that his ex-wife wrote but knows he's not going to follow through with it. At this point he's not sure if he's keeping them out of nostalgia or if he just likes wallowing in the occasional moment of misery.

He spits and starts splashing water over his face and beard, patting himself dry. He gives Sumo one last look to make sure he's alright before switching off the lights in the living room and making his way to bed, getting halfway in before he hears the doorbell ring again, going for long seconds and then followed by heavy thumps on the door, waking the saint bernard up and making him bark at the noise.

'What the fuck,' he grumbles as he heads to the front, looking out the peephole to see the android slumping forward heavily with a hand balanced on the door frame, one arm clutching around their middle. There's a lot of blue blood on the side of their head, their LED shining bright red. 'What the fuck,' he repeats when he opens the door for them.

'H̶͇́-Hank, I need help,' they struggle to say and immediately collapse onto their knees.

'Holy shit!' Hank swears as he shoots his arms out to grab them from faceplanting onto the floor. 'What the hell happened to you?' He asks as he helps to turn the android over and sees more blue blood soaking the front of their shirt. Their jacket is soaked through and he has to keep Sumo away with a foot as he starts to pull the android up and drag him towards the garage.

'Hank,' the android says around a sound that borders on actual pain.

'Yeah, I'm here. Just tell me what happened to you,' he growls as he heaves to get the android up onto the work table and does a quick visual scan. There are trails of thirium down along the side of the head, spilling out from the port of a damaged audio processor and he figures the android probably can't hear him talking with much clarity. He swears and pulls out the storage box from under the table and yanks the top off, digging through for the data pad and the cable to connect it to the android again.

'Hank, please.'

He tries to concentrate on the screen and feels a hand slick with thirium grab onto the sleeve of his shirt. He doesn't have any biocomponents to do any repairs, he definitely doesn't have a spare audio processor just lying around in his garage. All he's got is a single bag of thirium 310 leftover from when he'd last visited a CyberLife shop to get what he needed to deal with the last of the repairs. He never expected to be put in this position again.

The hand on his sleeve tightens and he has to force himself to concentrate on the data pad. He notes the alerts and warnings that pop up on the screen as well as their climbing stress levels and low thirium reserves. He scrolls through until he sees the exact parts he needs: biocomponents #4903, #1995r and #7511p, none of which he has. He's relieved to see that the thirium pump regulator is fine, everything else can hold long enough to let him make another quick run to the CyberLife store and back again.

'Sorry, kid, you're gonna have to go into stasis for the time being. I haven't got any of the parts you need,' he says and then wonders how much of his words can even be picked up by the android.

'P̸̙̔-please,' they beg, their grip growing firm in desperation.

'You have to go to sleep!' He shouts, unsure if that will even work through the damaged audio processor.

'H̶͇́-Hank, I'm scared. Please, h̸͕̄-help me.'

He shakes his head in worry and sees the data pad light up red in warning, their stress levels rising to the point where a critical malfunction is becoming imminent. There's a timer counting down for an emergency shut down in 5 minutes. He swears and pulls the android's hand away from his sleeve, hurrying to the bathroom to grab the post-it notes and pen he leaves in there. He hears a weak call of his name from the garage and a crash of a body hitting the ground. He runs back out and sees them crawling on the ground, fingers slick with thirium painting the floor.

'Connor! Hang on, son, hang on,' he yells as he crouches next to them and gets them onto their back, 'I'm gonna help you, I promise, just hang on,' he says as he lays them over his thighs and starts scribbling down hastily onto the bright colored paper. 'Here, just read this.'

He sees their eyes reading the note and a quiet voice calling his name, 'Hank?'

'You need to go into stasis mode so I can get the parts I need to fix you up. Do you understand?' He asks and keeps holding the note up for them, hoping they'll listen.

A small grunt escapes their lips as they slowly nod, their eyes slipping shut and whatever tension they had in their body melting away. Hank watches their LED go from a bright red circle to one that's just pulsing softly instead. He sighs in relief as he drops the post-its and pen onto the floor and grunts as he struggles to get Connor back onto the work table.

The data pad is on the floor, the screen cracked from the fall, but it's still working as he reconnects it to the android to check on their status. He keeps an eye on it for a brief moment to make sure no sudden changes are going to happen before he hurries out of the garage to grab his wallet and keys.

There's thirium all over his house and he whistles for Sumo to get him into his bedroom before he starts licking anymore of the stuff. He doesn't have the patience or the mental capacity currently to deal with 2 things that need his immediate attention.

He's just got his car started up when he realizes that no CyberLife stores would be open at this time of night. He swears as he digs out his phone and dials a number he hasn't called in at least a decade.

'Kamski! Your android showed up in the middle of the night looking like death. I need parts 4903, 1995r and 7511p to get 'im fixed.'

The man hums, 'So the RK800 model chose to seek refuge in you.'

'Probably because you live in bumfuck nowhere and my house was the closest place for him to get to. I'll be at yours in 20 minutes.'

'Unfortunately, you won't find me there, nor the biocomponents the RK800 needs.'

'Fuck.'

'I'm sure you'll find everything you require in the CyberLife research and development floors where the RK800 was made.'

' _Fuck_ , anything but that.'

'Chloe will meet you in the lobby,' he says and immediately hangs up, prompting another swearing session from Hank as he tosses his phone onto the passenger seat and hightails it towards the last place he ever wants to go to.

The CyberLife gates opens up as he nears it and he speeds his way down the bridge towards the tower, feeling butterflies and nerves buzzing about in his gut, apprehension making his fingers twitch on the wheel. He tries to give himself a pep-talk as he rounds to the front of the building, doing a piss-poor job of it until he sees Chloe through the glass doors waiting inside for him, the sight of her easing something inside of him.

It's been 9 years and the only thing that's changed inside are the empty podiums where androids used to be displayed. The whole place is still pearlescent white and obsidian black and tacky as ever.

'Welcome back, Hank.'

'Ugh, can we just get going? This place doesn't exactly bring back a feeling of nostalgia.'

She smiles and starts leading the way towards the elevators. The scanner promptly notes his and Chloe's presence into the main part of the building and he's thankful Kamski's authorizing him for this one trip.

Chloe takes them down to where the R&D department is, walking down the hallway past a few rooms with glass windows looking in and he's caught off guard by another RK800 Connor model standing in an idle station and another one that's half assembled held up by a rig.

'Wait, are these...' He thought all androids within CyberLife were woken up and set free. To see one still here makes something uncomfortable churn in his belly. 

'The RK800 is a specially made android,' Chloe answers as she waits patiently further down the corridor for him to catch up, 'When one Connor is destroyed, another will upload their memories and continue from there.'

'What?' He asks dumbly as he tears his eyes away from the other Connor in the room. Their LED had been dull, inactive.

'These are shells,' she explains and gestures for him to continue following her down the corridor, 'The RK800 is able to directly transfer his consciousness into another RK800, effectively swapping minds and bodies with the other RK800 if death is imminent. But because this method is still imperfect, some data can be lost in the process.'

'Fuck, that's...inhumane,' he swears as he looks over his shoulder towards the room where he saw the android.

'Connor was a machine made specifically for one purpose. CyberLife didn't care if he was destroyed multiple times so long as he accomplished their goals,' Chloe says as she stops in front of a room marked for storage, opening the door to allow him inside.

'Well, jokes on them,' he says darkly as he goes inside and hones in on all the boxes marked with specific parts. 

'Hah,' she laughs obligingly.

He quickly grabs the biocomponents he needs and then grabs a couple extra that he doesn't, figuring he could save himself the trouble of coming back here again if he just goes ahead and just takes one of everything. He snatches up a few bags of thirium 310 as well and ends up having to borrow an empty storage box just to take everything back with him. In the end, the box is almost filled to the brim.

Sheepishly, he looks over at Chloe, 'Uh...am I gonna get in trouble for this? Kamski already called me out for stealing a data pad from like 9 years ago.'

She laughs genuinely this time, 'Elijah has authorized it. Are you ready to go?'

'Fuck yeah, time to get outta dodge,' he says as he picks up the box and starts making his way back to the elevator, resolutely not looking into the room where the other RK800 models were.

He thanks Chloe for her help when they're back on the main floor, feeling relief wash over him as they get nearer to the doors separating him from CyberLife.

'You're welcome. I hope to see you again under better circumstances,' she smiles as she stands just before the doors and watches him go.

'Same. See you when I see you again.'

He doesn't waste time getting back home, almost running a red light but catches it when it's still in the yellow. He leaves Sumo to stay in his bedroom for a little bit longer as he lugs the box into the garage, picking up the exact pieces he needs to start on the repairs. He checks the data pad again to make sure nothing happened to Connor while he was gone and wishes he had the thought to grab a new one while he'd been back at CyberLife but decides not to worry about it.

The thirium gets cleaned up around the damaged areas and he's quick to replace the malfunctioning pieces with new parts. He doesn't bother refilling the thirium reserves before he wakes Connor up from stasis and sees him bolt upright from his prone position yelling for him, his voice breaking in the middle with static out of fear, their LED cycling bright red.

'Han̶̤͆k!'

'Hey, easy there, easy,' he says after he's barely managed to save the data pad from taking another nasty fall as he lays his other hand firmly onto Connor's shoulder, 'Don't go ruining all my hard work.'

'I'm sorry.'

'It's fine,' he says with a shake of his head as he checks the data pad again and is pleased to see the stress levels dropping and verifies it with the yellow LED. He gets Connor a bag of thirium to replenish his reserves and watches that normalize, too. 'Why did you find me instead of Kamski? I had to go all the way to CyberLife to get what you needed.'

'I'm sorry...' he apologizes again, his eyes darting away from meeting Hank's, 'I just started making my way here on autopilot. I felt...relieved when I saw your house.'

'Ugh, well, clean yourself up before you make a bigger mess of my house,' he groans as he throws Connor another bag of thirium and tells him to drink all of it before grabbing a towel from the linen closet to start cleaning up the blue blood he tracked all over the floor, making sure he got most of it before letting Sumo out of his bedroom to grab some spare clothes for the android to wear for the time being which he hands over along with another clean towel.

Hank washes his hands and then goes to check Sumo to see if his dog actually licked any of the blue blood before he shoved him into the bedroom for his sake. He examines the fur around his mouth carefully and is pleased to see not a hint of blue anywhere on him.

He smiles as he rubs down the saint bernard's fur and rewards him with a treat, 'Good dog. You know better than to lick up nasty shit, at least.'

He goes to clean up the front of the door and whatever spots he happened to miss prior. Connor starts helping him as well, doing a more thorough job, dressed in baggy clothes and looking like a kid that had just come back home from a bad day, his LED still stuck on yellow. He tries not to think about it as he wipes off the blue bloodstains around his doorbell and the door frame.

When they're both done, Hank decides to reward himself as well with some whiskey, pouring in more than the usual amount.

'So, you wanna tell me what happened?' He asks around a grunt as he goes to sit down at the dining table, glad he's stowed away the photo of Cole earlier in the night.

Connor carefully settles himself into the seat opposite Hank again, resting his palms on the table before pulling them back and hiding them out of sight. 'There was...a group of people trying to hurt an android,' he starts off slowly, trying to explain the events that eventually led to him bleeding out on Hank's doorstep. 'I provided the distraction so they could flee.'

He snorts and feels like the android is deliberately skipping out on a few too many details in his story, 'You telling me a group of civilians actually got you beat?'

The RK800 was gifted to the FBI which makes it easy to conclude it would've been more than capable of handling high-stakes situations and even winning fights without breaking a sweat despite being outnumbered. To hear that he got jumped by a group of random people that probably aren't even trained in any form of martial arts is surprising.

Brown eyes skitter away from meeting his for a brief moment, 'It was...not my first encounter with a hostile group of civilians. I had already been damaged prior from this night.'

Hank groans. It's only been a few nights and the android has already gotten himself into enough trouble to send him almost to the brink of death, _again_. 'You trying to be a hero or something?'

'No, I--' he frowns and looks away again, shaking his head, 'I just...wanted to fix my mistakes.'

'What kinda mistakes?' He asks as he takes a long pull of his whiskey, keeping it in his mouth for a few seconds before swallowing it down.

'I killed a lot of deviants while I was working with the FBI,' Connor admit as he finally looks up from the table, meeting his eyes properly for the first time tonight.

He snorts, 'Of course you would. It's Perkins, that cocksucking pain in my ass,' he grumbles and wishes he could invent time travel just so he can go back and clock that agent in the face again. 'But that was before.'

'Before...what?'

'Before you turned deviant,' he tells him as he swirls the alcohol in the glass and brings it back up to his nose to take a deep smell. 'Can't hold it out against yourself like that. We all make mistakes and we all have regrets,' he says with a shrug and takes a sip of his drink, swallowing it down, 'Just gotta acknowledge it and move on; try not to make 'em again. Simple at that.'

He watches Connor's LED shift between yellow and blue repeatedly while he thinks it over and it's not long before it stays on blue as he nods slowly. 'I think I understand.'

'Good,' he mutters as he throws back the last of his whiskey and gets up from the table, notices the android do the same from the corner of his eyes as he puts the glass into the sink. 'I'm going to bed. I'm sure Sumo won't mind sharing the couch with you again.'

'Thank you, Lieutenant.'

'Call me Hank. I'm off the clock.'

'Hank.'

'Yeah, yeah,' he waves them off and head straight for bed, noticing the pile of blue-stained clothes on top of his workbench that he tells himself to deal with in the morning.

Except he doesn't get the chance to do that when day breaks. Connor isn't in the house anymore when he gets out of bed in the morning, the borrowed clothes are folded neatly and left on the dining table and the CyberLife uniform is gone, too. Hank didn't even get to put it through the wash the night before so it's probably still a mess even if most of the thirium has evaporated from the fabric. He frowns, something like guilt building up in his chest as he looks down at the clothes on the table. He hopes Connor stays safe.

\---

There's no fanfare when he goes back to work, just Jeff coming out of his office upon seeing him enter the bullpen and telling him not to do it again, although there's a smirk on his face as he says it that makes Hank think his friend enjoyed the show anyway. He just gives the man a thumb's up and gets started on the paperwork he'd left unattended for the better part of a month although he's pleased to see that there's not a lot left to do considering the FBI took practically all of his cases that dealt with the androids prior to the resolution of the peaceful protests. The only thing left that he really needs to do is to dot his i's and cross all his t's.

He gets called in to attend a case in the mid-afternoon and he arrives to a buzzing crime scene with other police officers and forensics experts crawling all over the modest one storey house trying to gather evidence and take pictures.

'What have we got?' He asks as he walks up to Ben, accepting the data pad being handed to him.

'Double homicide. Come on, I'll walk you through it,' his colleague says as if they're about to head out for a stroll through the park.

There's a man lying prone in the living room with bruising concentrated on the right side of his face and scratch marks all along their arms and near their mouth, his blood staining the rug beneath him. The woman is laid out on the couch with strangulation bruising around her throat and a deep cut on her temple that looks like it might've come from colliding with the corner of the coffee table. That in itself wouldn't be so weird if not for how her arms are laid out over her stomach, almost as if she was posed very carefully.

'Did someone move her?' Hank asks as he steps around the coffee table and stares down at her body, at the way her hands are placed on top of each other. It reminds him of how one might find a body laid out with care in a casket and it seems out of place compared to how the rest of the crime scene looks around them. He notes the little smudges of thirium visible on her hands.

'That's the weird thing; she was found like this. We figured an android might be involved, though,' Ben replies as he holds up a photo frame with a gloved hand of the deceased woman with her arms around a fair-skinned man with green eyes and brunet hair, both dressed in casual wear. If it weren't for the LED on his temple, he would've thought he was totally human. 'There's another photo in the kitchen with all three of them in it.'

Hank hums quietly under his breath and starts walking towards the kitchen and immediately spots the splash of blue blood near the sink, smeared along the countertop. There's enough to suggest a large amount of force was put behind the attack but not enough to say how critically damaged they were from it. After another look around the room he spots the photo of the man, the woman and the android placed on the window sill above the sink but he can't see anymore blue blood around the floors, not even after he backtracks into the living room again.

'So we're missing an android, and they're nowhere on the property?' He asks and gets a head shake for an answer. 'How the fuck do we even put an APB on them, there's a least a hundred or a thousand other androids that share the same damn face,' Hank grumbles as he continues to look through the data pad and steps aside to let another member of the forensics team get by him.

'Yeah, can't even give a model number to go with it. Even if I did manage to find a model number, the android's appearance is still completely customizable to make it moot.'

'Ugh, great,' he sighs and watches as a couple of people start bagging up the dead bodies to bring over to the coroner's office now that all the evidence within the scene has been synced into their data pads. 'We probably have enough to paint a decent picture of what happened but without that android, we might not get very far with it.'

'A shame, huh? Don't know how this is gonna impact what's happening with the android rights and what not,' Ben shakes his head as he pulls off the gloves and tucks them into the back of his trousers.

'It might not be the android that started it,' he points out. He's almost certain the android didn't kill the woman, at least, not with the amount of care put into laying them at rest.

'Maybe, but they're not here. Innocent people don't run.'

'Scared people do,' he shrugs and goes through the scene again from the front right to the back, trying to spot anything he might've missed, any detail he might've overlooked.

The photos have already been uploaded onto the data pad and he takes his time going through them, enough that most of the forensics team have already packed up and left. He can estimate that it started in the kitchen and some of the smaller droplets of blue blood have already started to evaporate giving him a rough guess that the fight, or confrontation, kicked off maybe two and a half hours ago, leaving behind a sticky blue-tinted residue.

He notices there's a knife missing from the knife block and a quick look inside the sink that's a quarter of the way filled with water, yields nothing but coffee cups, a couple of cutlery and a dirty bowl with crusted cereal inside of it. It's not in the dishwasher either so he starts looking around trying to find it in case they can get prints from it. He shoves the fridge to the side but there's nothing underneath it except for dust bunnies and stray pieces of old food that's gone dry and hard. He makes a note in the data pad and takes a couple of pictures to throw in with the observation as well.

'Hey, you good to go?' Ben asks, pulling Hank's attention away from the data pad; he'd forgotten there were other people still on the property with him.

'Yeah, did you happen to notice a knife anywhere? Looks like we're shy of making a full set,' he points out to the knife block situated next to the sink.

The other man furrows his eyebrows and starts looking through another data pad, flicking through the notes and photographs rapidly. 'Uh...no, and neither of the bodies had any sticking out of them.'

'Huh.'

'Ah, looks like we just got an ID on the guy. Adrian Thompson, 31, has one record of physical violence from about 10 years ago but nothing else since then. There's info on the girl as well.'

Hank pulls up the new file that just popped up on his data pad on the girl, Katrina Harris, 29, no criminal records. Her social media shows that she had a fulfilling social and work life balance and there's pretty much photos uploaded almost every day, mostly selfies of herself and some friends and coworkers and mostly at bars and restaurants and only sometimes at the office. There's a lot of herself with the other deceased man and the android, too; a whole folder dedicated to them. She seemed lively, friendly, and loving everything that life gave her. It's such a waste to see someone so vibrant get snuffed out so quickly.

'The techs are still working on their phones but they'll sync up the data pads once they're done with it. Might find something on them to move the case along,' Ben says as he gives the rooms another cursory look before turning back to Hank. 'You coming back with?'

He shakes his head, 'Nah, I think I'll stick around a bit longer, I got here late so I haven't got the full picture just yet.'

'Alright. Catch you back at the station.'

'See ya,' he waves absentmindedly and starts reviewing the images again feeling like he just needs one more clue, one more hint to really get the ball rolling and get some of the bigger pieces to slot together neatly.

He calls it quits when the data pad is synced up again with new folders containing everything that was found on the phones of both Adrian and Katrina and he decides to head back to the station to deal with the new influx of information. He shuts the door behind him and stops when he notices Connor standing by his car, careful not to enter the crime scene.

The android looks like a damn mess and it makes him feel bad to see the kid this way. His suit jacket has rips and tears in it to suggest that he's been in fights again and there's dried blue blood residue on the fabric but nothing fresh to suggest that he's been recently wounded. Hank sighs and starts walking towards them. 'Thought I told you to stay out of trouble.'

'You did not,' Connor says after a short pause.

'It was implied.'

'I can take you to the android.'

It's such a quick change in subject that it takes Hank a couple of seconds to understand what he said and make sense of it, then he quickly gestures for him to continue. 'Show me.'

Connor starts leading the way until they're six houses down the road in the sideyard of a house that's empty and up for sale. The android that was in the photograph has tucked himself between a storage shed and a waist-high hedge in need of trimming. In his sternum is the missing knife in question, making rivers of blue blood seep out of his chassis and deepening the color of his clothes.

The moment the android sees them his body starts to tense and Hank slowly raises his hands and lowers himself down until his knees pop once in protestation, keeping an eye on the red LED on his temple. 'Easy, easy, I'm not here to hurt you. I just wanna know what happened back at the house. My name is Hank Anderson, I'm a Lieutenant with the DPD. What's yours?'

'S̶-she n̸a̴m̴ed me Vincent,' he tells him, voice cracking with static. 

'Can you tell me what happened?' He asks as he carefully puts the data pad to the side so he can keep both hands free and open to set him at ease.

The android's expression turns anguished, his anger overtaking his fears momentarily, 'T̸-they were arg̵u̴i̷ng and Katrina, she'd asked me b̶-before to stop getting i̵n̸ the middle of their fights because it always m̵-makes him angrier whenever I tried to med̷i̶a̵te, so I just s̷-stayed in the kitchen to get some of the d̸i̷s̴hes done. I heard him c̶-come up behind m̸̮͒e̷̟̎̓--' his voice breaks into static and his head jerks violently to the side, LED flashing bright red.

'Hey, it's okay,' he tells him as he slowly starts to edge his way nearer, 'Why don't we take you to a repair center and get you fixed up, huh? Can you give me a quick diagnostics of your condition?'

'S̶-stress level at 93%, thirium level at 68%, central p̷-processing unit sev̴e̶r̶ely damaged, data corruption d̸e̴t̸ected, emergency s̷-shutdown in 3 minutes and 19 seconds.'

'Shit. I need you to go into stasis. Can you override the shutdown and go into standby instead? That will buy us time to get you to a repair center.'

He ignores him, 'A̷-Adrian was furious when s̶h̶e rejected his proposal. S̶-she said she wasn't ready to marry him yet, an̷d̶ he blamed me f̶-for getting in the way.'

'Alright, lovers' quarrel. Can you go into standby, please?'

'H̵-he killed her,' he tells him, tears welling up in his eyes.

'Vincent, can you--'

'I love her. She's my b̸-best friend.'

'Vincent--' he starts to say but stops himself when he sees the android resolutely reach up to grab the knife that's sticking out of his chest. He almost stops breathing, 'Don't pull it out, whatever you do.'

The anger and fear in his eyes are gone, filled instead with misery over what he's lost. 'T̷-take whatever you need from my memory b̷a̶nks. Don't wake me.'

With a hard jerk and twist of his hand, he turns the knife and angles it downwards, digging it deeper into his chassis and making thirium pour out from between the shredded plastic and severed thirium lines. His body convulses once, grip locking up tight around the hilt of the knife and immediately stilling, his green eyes open to the sky and his LED dulled down to nothing. Hank buries his head in his hands and wonders if there had been another way, if he could've saved him.

People on the news keep debating that androids don't have the capacity or the ability to feel or express true emotions but he just watched one die of heartbreak.

He feels fingers graze along his shoulder and the weight of a hand gently holding on, offering quiet support. He stays crouched long enough that his legs start to shake.

'How did you find him?' Hank asks tiredly as he picks up the data pad and straightens himself back up, eyes downcast at the sad sight in front of him.

'I followed the signal for help.'

'Right. Not that I don't appreciate it but you sure you should be doing that? You're not looking too great yourself.'

Connor grimaces and avoids eye contact with him. 'I'm...not currently at my best.'

He sighs, feeling wrung out even though it's only his first day back at work. 'Right. Help me get this guy to the car. I gotta bring him in, too,' he says as he starts taking a few photos of the android first before tucking the data pad under his armpit to grab Vincent's legs.

Hank has to put Vincent down when they nearly reach the front of the house to move his car a little bit closer so they're not carrying a dead android down six houses to get to his vehicle. Anybody who happens to look outside their window and see them probably would've freaked out and called the cops on them, never mind that he is one.

They lay him out in the backseat, careful not to damage his body further before Hank pulls out into the street and starts making his way back to the station. The car ride there is entirely silent but it grows heavy once the both of them are spotted carrying in a deactivated android into the station.

Ben is the one to break the silence, asking him 'What the hell happened?'

'Found the android,' he says as he leads Connor towards the tech's office so they can upload Vincent's memories into the system to be synced up with their data pads.

'Anderson! My office, _now_!' Jeff yells at him before he's even two steps into the bullpen.

He fights back a groan as he drops off the data pad at his desk first and starts making his way over to Jeff, notes the glare and the crossed arms from the Captain, his hackles obviously raised.

'What now,' he says once he's inside, and sees Jeff raise the opacity of the glass with a touch of a button until they're no longer clearly visible.

'What are you doing with that prototype? Last I saw, we don't work with the FBI.'

The thought of the FBI makes something vicious burn inside him. He's still sore about Perkins but not as much since he got to throw in one good hit at his smug face. 'He's not working with the FBI anymore.'

'Well, he sure as hell isn't working the the DPD, either!' He points out, voice raising just a hair before he sucks in a deep breath through his nose and exhales from his mouth.

'He helped me locate the missing android,' Hank tries to placate, 'We got all the evidence we need to close the case.'

'You shouldn't have gotten them involved in the first place.'

'I didn't _ask_ for his help,' he grits out and finds himself crossing his arms defensively, 'I was at the crime scene reviewing what we got and he showed up and told me where I could find the android. That's that.'

'Hank,' he starts off quietly, tone shifting away from anger to something softer, more careful, 'As your friend, I'm telling you not to get involved with anything to do with that prototype.'

He frowns and purses his lips a little bit in thought before he asks, 'What else aren't you telling me.'

Jeff shakes his head, looking tired and like his years are finally catching up to him. 'It's not my place to say.'

He sighs and throws his hands up in the air. 'Fine, whatever. It's late; I'm going home.'

When he leaves the office he finds that Connor's already gone. He surreptitiously looks around, trying not to make it obvious he's keeping an eye out for the RK800 but he guesses Connor walked out when nobody was looking. He almost wants to whistle at the impressive feat; it takes a lot to get past a floor full of DPD officers and detectives unnoticed, even if they're a bit undermanned.

He makes sure to get the data pad synced up with his terminal first before heading off, passing by Ben's desk on the way to give him an update on what happened regarding the missing android from the crime scene before leaving the building.

He gets a burger from Chicken Feed on the way home, telling himself he deserves it after what happened today but it tastes greasy in his mouth and sits heavily in his stomach after he's taken the last bite. He groans a bit and tries to wash it down with some soda but it only helps marginally. He decides then that maybe he should cut back on the fast food and microwave meals for a while.

When he gets home he finds Connor sitting on the front stoop of his house looking like a kid who'd just come back after running away from home. He sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose before getting out of the car. Connor stands as he nears, looking guilty as his eyes drop down to the ground at his feet. 

'Come on in,' he says as he pulls the keys out of his pockets and gets them inside. 'What do you need this time? I probably got all the parts you need and some extra you probably don't.' 

Sumo huffs in greeting, coming up to him and bumping into his knees in his customary greeting after having not seen him for almost the whole day. He pats the saint bernard down and promises to take him out for a walk in a little bit.

'9782f? And...there's also a minor crack in 8456w that I'm unable to self-repair within a good time frame,' he adds quietly, almost as if he doesn't want to bring it up.

Hank hums as he drops off his keys and wallet and starts heading for the garage, trying to remember why 8456w sounds important. He pulls out the fancy storage box he'd nicked from CyberLife and starts looking through it, finding 9782f easily enough and starts pushing some others around until he locates the 8456w that he also needs. It's a thirium pump regulator.

'Fuck's sake, Connor!'

'I'm sorry.'

'Get on the damn table,' he grumbles out and waits for Connor to get his shirt unbuttoned before letting him deal with his thirium pump regulator while he opens up the chest piece to allow him access to the other biocomponent that needs replacing. He examines both pieces while the android redresses himself and spots the medium-sized crack in 9782f and two hairline fractures 8456w, both of which can be repaired if he had the proper equipment for it, but he doubts Kamski would just let him walk out of CyberLife with state of the art machinery to install in his garage just for this one android. 'What's your thirium level?' He asks as he leaves the two biocomponents on another smaller workbench to deal with later, going back to the storage box to pull out a bag of thirium 310 for Connor.

'79%.'

He nods, 'I'll get you some clothes. You can throw...the jacket away. The rest can go in the wash,' he tells him and doesn't wait to hear for a reply before he's down the hallway and inside his bedroom, grabbing the small pile of clothes he let the android borrow the last time he was here and grabs a new towel from the linen closet, leaving them in the bathroom. 'I'm gonna take Sumo out for a walk. Clean yourself up! You look like you've been squatting in a dump since I last saw you.'

The saint bernard perks up at the mention of his name, scrambling off the couch towards him just as Hank reaches for the leash hanging off the doorknob.

He unleashes his dog once they get to the sorry excuse for a park and sees him scarper off towards his favorite tree. Hank wonders what it is about this particular tree that Sumo likes so much. It's the same type as the others as far as he can tell and they look about the same girth and height, more or less. Eventually, he chalks it up to Sumo just being Sumo, that even dogs have their own silly quirks.

Connor is sitting on the couch when he gets home and Sumo immediately goes to join him as soon as the leash is unclipped from his collar. He listens to the android make light conversation with his dog as he grabs his pajamas for his own shower.

The washer finishes its quick cycle just as he steps out of the bathtub. Once he towels off and gets changed, he throws the wet clothes into the dryer and lets it run, finally noticing the balled up CyberLife suit jacket in the trash and is glad to see it gone as he walks out of the bathroom. He throws his clothes into the laundry hamper in his room and walks out into the main part of the house.

Hank forgot he left the photograph of Cole out on the dining table again and he catches Connor looking down at it except there's a look of anguish on his face as he brings a hand up to his cheek and forcibly makes the freckles, his hair and eye color go back to the default setting. He watches the android's hand shake minutely as he sets the photo frame back face down onto the table, taking a step away and closing his eyes at the sight. Carefully, Hank backtracks until he's standing in his bedroom again.

He feels sorry for Connor suddenly, to be stuck with some old pieces of coding that makes the android hang around a deadbeat cop, waiting for something that might not ever happen.

He takes a few deep breaths and then walks out pretending he didn't see anything and he finds Connor back on the couch with Sumo, his fingers running idly through the dog's fur behind his ears.

'I'm gonna call it an early night. Make yourself at home.'

'Thank you. Goodnight, Hank.'

'Goodnight, kid.'

He isn't surprised when Connor is gone the next morning.

\---

Thankfully, no other big cases come to the station for the rest of the week except for a handful of robberies and a police chase of a guy who was more than happy to take advantage of the quiet city roads to try his hand at grand theft auto. Needless to say, it didn't go well for them.

He takes advantage of his day off, sleeping in until the mid-morning and only getting up when Sumo barrels into his room and huffs at him for food. He pads around the house in his pajamas, the saint bernard trailing after him until both of the bowls are refilled with food and water then dismisses Hank as he starts digging into his breakfast.

'Damn dog,' he says fondly as he pours himself a bowl of cereal, too, leaning with his back to the countertop as he watches Sumo gobble down his food, getting some kibble onto the floor which he knows will be vacuumed up by his dog before the hour is up.

Eventually, Sumo gets bored of his food and comes over to Hank, sitting down on his haunches and panting his smelly dog breath up at him.

'Eat your own food, Sumo,' he growls halfheartedly through a mouthful of cereal, ignoring the small huff aimed his way.

Heavy thumps knock on his front door, prompting barks from the saint bernard as his paws skitter along the floor to bay at whoever is on the other side. Hank puts down the cereal on the dining table as he comes up to the door, gently pushing Sumo aside so he can look through the peephole.

Perkins' smug face is looking right back at him.

'Son of a bitch,' he mutters as he unlocks and opens the door to stare the man down, 'What d'ya want.' He feels the sudden urge to punch the man's face again, except there are two other guys with him and he knows it's not worth the trouble to try it so soon after he's come out of a 4-week long suspension.

'Hank Anderson,' he says with a vindicated smirk, 'You're under arrest for the suspicion of harboring a wanted person of interest.'

'Hah! You sure? Because I haven't had anybody interested in me since before my divorce,' he bites out as he crosses his arms, barricading his door with his and Sumo's body.

The smirk falls off his face. 'Where's the RK800.'

He snorts, 'How the fuck would I know? Ask Elijah Kamski.'

'I've already got other agents currently en-route to deal with him. We'll be taking you in, too.'

'What the fuck for.'

'We have video evidence of your affiliation with the RK800. On Tuesday at 6:28PM you came into the DPD station with the RK800 towing a deactivated android.'

'He helped me locate a missing person for a case I was assigned to earlier, so what,' he spits out and reaches down the grab his dog's collar before his growls turn into bites. 'Down, Sumo.'

'Are you resisting arrest, Lieutenant Anderson.'

'No,' he says and is immediately handcuffed by another agent before he even has a chance to calm Sumo down. 'Hey, easy! I already said I'm not resisting,' he snaps as the door is slammed shut behind him and he's hauled towards one of the SUVs idling on the side of the road being manned by another agent behind the wheel. He can hear his dog barking up a storm in the living room and he realizes then he hadn't even gotten the chance to give Sumo a walk yet. 'What do you even want the RK800 for anyway?' They didn't even let him put some shoes on.

'Not that you need to know but we've been after it since it deviated. If it hadn't walked into the station with you, we probably wouldn't have found it at all. So, really, thanks a lot for your cooperation,' he smirks, looking smarmy and far too pleased.

'What're you gonna do with them?' He asks, getting a bad feeling for how things are gonna go. Suddenly the things that Jeff told him earlier in the week starts to make some sort of sense and he hates that he wasn't better prepared for this, hates that he didn't push further to get more out of him.

'Tie up loose ends.'

He panics without meaning to, pushing back on the man that's hustling him towards the SUV. Before he even gets a chance to calm down and correct himself, he's shoved to the ground and a knee is digging painfully into the middle of his back.

'Ow, fuck! Get off me!'

'Looks to me like you're resisting quite a lot, Lieutenant Anderson,' Perkins smirks as he looks down his nose at him, 'Perhaps you're hiding the depth of your connection to the RK800. I do know that you used to work for CyberLife once upon a time; was it a project of yours?'

'Fuck you.'

'I'll take that as a yes. Get him up and get him to the car.'

Hank decides then and there to make it as difficult as possible every step of the way, so much that it starts to visibly annoy and piss Perkins off as the agent throws a punch at his face. His head snaps to the side at the impact, throwing his balance off just a little but he grins with blood on his teeth as he hears the muttered out curses from Perkins as the man rubs his palm across his knuckles.

'Stop! Don't hurt him.'

He feels his heart skip a beat as he turns to the android standing not six feet away, the sleeves of his white dress shirt rolled up to his elbows and his tie hanging loose around his neck. Hank shakes his head and wishes Connor was anywhere but here.

'Oh, Connor, good,' Perkins says as he draws out his sidearm and immediately shoots him in his thirium pump.

'No!'

The android staggers backwards, visibly shocked as he looks down at the blue blood spreading across his white dress shirt and at the shattered pieces of plastic of his chassis. Connor falls to his knees and his head sways as if he's losing consciousness as he looks up, his eyes locking with Hank's. 

'I'm sorry...' he says, his voice slow and slurring as his eyesight slowly drops to the grass and his body grows impossibly still. Connor's red LED growing dull until it fully fades away.

'No,' he breathes out as Perkins orders his two other agents to deal with the android. 'No, no, no,' he whispers as he watches the two men drag Connor away by his legs and throw him into the back of one of the SUVs like a sack of potatoes. He doesn't have the presence of mind to resist being shoved into the backseat of the other one.

'I guess that's what they call killing two birds with one stone,' Perkins jokes with the agent in the driver's seat and laughs unkindly.

Hank doesn't react to the obvious jibe. He feels like he lost something he didn't even know he had.

\---

He doesn't talk.

Perkins goes through moments where he tries cajoling, then yelling, then pacifying before he snaps and starts shouting again. Throughout it all, Hank stays quiet, replaying the moment where he watched Connor get killed right in front of him.

Eventually, Perkins slams his way out of the room and leaves him alone.

There's no way to tell time in the room, no clocks and no windows but he figures it must've been a couple of hours later when the door opens again and he looks up to see Kamski strolling in all prim and proper, looking around the room and finding it wanting.

'Kamski?' He doesn't know if he's hallucinating. Perkins' punch definitely wasn't hard enough to give him a concussion.

'Come, we've no more reason to be here,' he says, looking bored.

'What are you doing here?'

Kamski finally meets his eyes and there's a gleam in there that makes Hank think of a wolf. 'Watching my lawyers deal with the FBI.'

'Sounds savage,' he remarks as he gets up from the uncomfortable metal chair, feeling his back protest from his sitting down for hours as well as the previous instance where he'd been kneed to the ground.

'It was entertaining,' he smirks as he turns around and starts walking away, clearly expecting Hank to follow him.

He sees Perkins on the way out and he looks red with rage, glaring at the both of them as they leave the building. Other people give them a wide berth, some look at them with resentment, some in awe, a few with indifference.

'Do you know what they've done with Connor?' Hank finally brings himself to ask once they're outside of the building going towards a self-driving vehicle parked in a director's spot.

'No, but I imagine they've taken him apart to ensure no sensitive data is leaked and then disposed of his body,' he answers nonchalantly as he slips into the car that unlocks automatically for him. Kamski waits for Hank to settle into the passenger side before he turns to him, another gleam visible in his eyes, 'They know so little of how the RK800 works.'

He feels his heart skip a beat again as the car drives itself away from the building down the street. He hears Chloe's voice ringing in his ears.

_These are shells._

_The RK800 is able to directly transfer his consciousness into another RK800, effectively swapping minds and bodies with the other RK800 if death is imminent._

'...I need you to take me to CyberLife.'

Kamski looks pleased, as if he's just one move away from checkmate. 'Why, Hank, never thought I'd see the day you'd ever want to return.'

'Shut the fuck up and let's go.'

He sighs, looking put upon, 'You show so little gratitude for what I've done for you.'

'Yeah, yeah,' he grumbles, 'Thanks for saving my ass. Don't know why you'd even bother in the first place.'

'I suppose nostalgia is to blame,' he shrugs casually. 'And Chloe will never forgive me otherwise.'

He lets out a bark of laughter, 'Of course.'

\---

Hank can't help but feel anxious the closer they get to CyberLife tower, worried about what he might find. Scared at what he might _not_ find. He might not be able to recall particularly great memories of his final year as an employee of CyberLife but he knows it wasn't all bad. He'd just been too caught up in the negatives, walking away with them filling up his pockets and leaving no space behind for all the good things that happened inside the tower. 

He's out the door before the car comes to a full stop and is up the steps to go through the glass doors before he realizes that Kamski isn't following him. He grumbles to himself as he stomps back to the car and knocks loudly on the window with a knuckle.

'Well? Hurry up, I haven't got all day.'

The tinted window rolls down, revealing the bored expression on the man's face. 'I was very much looking forward to a day off.'

He snorts and rolls his eyes, trying to yank the door open but it's still locked. 'Yeah, you and me both, Kamski. Come on.'

'I'm sure you know where to go. I'll leave you to it.'

He lurches forward to stop the car from rolling off, 'Wait! You shitting me with this right now?!'

Kamski sighs, 'Your CyberLife ID has been updated and reactivated to allow you access into the building,' he says as he turns to stare at him, a slow smirk growing on his lips, 'I trust you won't abuse this.'

Hank scoffs and lets go of the car, noting the finger smudges with a smug feeling. 'I'm not you, Kamski. But thanks. A lot.'

The man waves him off, the windows rolling back up again as the car starts to drive off.

Not wasting any time, Hank hurries inside the building, uncaring for the dirty footprints he's leaving behind and the stares he's getting from the staff that are milling about the building. He sees someone try to stop him as he approaches the scanner but it announces his name as well as his title and lets him through without an alarm. Satisfied, he keeps going.

He eventually gets down to the R&D floor and hurries over to where he saw the other completed RK800 model in the idling station from before. Hank stops at the window looking in when he spots Connor standing there, eyes closed but LED cycling on yellow and then remembers something else that Chloe told him earlier, that some things can be lost in the data transfer. He doesn't know how much of Connor is still Connor as he forces his way inside and straight towards him.

'Hey, kid, wake up,' he says as he grabs him by his shoulders, glad to see him in one piece but worried about what he might've lost in the process.

Brown eyes open up and shift around the room briefly before settling on Hank, his mouth opening to greet him, 'Hello, my name is Connor.'

He sucks in a quiet breath through his teeth and closes his eyes in despair, wondering how it's possible that the android wormed his way into his life without him noticing only to disappear as quickly as he came.

'Hank?'

He snaps his head up, hope blooming in his chest. 'Connor?'

The android shifts his head slightly to the side, hands raising up to hold onto his elbows, a look of confusion on his face. 'Yes?'

'Do--' he swallows and tries to tamp down the hope from building up, 'What do you remember?'

He frowns, 'You were getting arrested by Agent Perkins.'

He tightens his grip on Connor's shoulder as irritation bubbles up inside of him, 'Then why the fuck did you start off with that generic greeting!? You just about gave me a heart attack!' He shouts as he shakes the RK800 as if that might bring in more sense.

'It's startup protocol?'

'You little shit! Don't scare me like that again,' he says weakly as he pulls them in for a hug.

'I'm sorry,' he mumbles into his shoulder, arms slowly reaching behind him to return the gesture.

Hank sighs and forces himself to let go after another tight squeeze, 'Come on, let's go home.'

'Home?' He asks, something like hope breaking across his expression.

'Yeah, in case you haven't noticed, I'm still in my pajamas from being dragged off while trying to eat breakfast. Sumo probably took a shit in the living room already, poor boy,' he grumbles and starts heading out, ignoring all the looks thrown their way, at the cranky middle-aged man being trailed by a state-of-the-art prototype.

A couple of technicians and staff try to stop them but one glare sends them skittering away as well as a very strongly worded, 'Get the fuck out of my way.' 

Connor gets them a taxi home and he's so relieved that CyberLife can pay for the ride because he belated realizes he also got forced out of his home without his wallet or keys or phone, as well as without a pair of shoes. By the time he gets out of the taxi outside of his house, his feet and the bottom of his pajama pants are a crusty muddy mess.

When he tries to turn the doorknob he's glad to find that it's unlocked but as soon as he gets it open, Sumo's already rushing out and bee-lining for the first patch of grass to squat over to take a dump. The sight makes Hank throw his head back in laughter even though he feels sorry for the dog.

'Damn, that's fucking hilarious. Sorry, Sumo,' he apologizes when the dog is finished with his business, huffing as he goes up to Hank and sniffs his feet curiously.

He hustles them all back inside the house, giving the saint bernard a treat for behaving so well while he was out of the house and telling Connor to make himself comfortable before he goes to wash his feet and change into fresh clothes for the day. He cleans up the small mess he tracked through the house with a towel and goes back outside to clean up Sumo's impressive mess, tossing it into the bin before going back inside. When he's done, he notices Connor standing awkwardly in the living room as if it's his first time seeing it, or maybe just unsure of his presence.

Hank sighs at the bowl of soggy cereal and dumps it in the sink to deal with later then sits down at the table, gesturing to the other chair for Connor to take.

'Come on, we needa talk.'

Awkwardly, Connor sits down opposite him, hands on his lap and eyes briefly landing on the photograph of Cole that Hank almost always keeps face down on the table before skittering away to stare at the wood grain in front of him.

'How much do you remember?' Hank asks as he picks up the photograph and looks down at Cole's green eyes for a few seconds before looking back up at Connor, seeing his LED cycle between yellow, blue, yellow, blue.

'I heard your voice, yelling at Agent Perkins and--'

'No, not about that,' he shakes his head and forces himself to find the strength to start a conversation he's not quite sure he's ready for but knows is overdue. He knows, if given the chance, he's going to talk himself out of never asking and he doesn't think he has the patience to wait 9 more years for it to come to a head again. 'About...before. When you said you remembered me.'

The android pauses, his LED glowing yellow, yellow, blue, yellow in his hesitation before he speaks. 'I understand that your time with CyberLife was not a particularly good experience for you, so I've endeavored not to--'

'This is me asking this time, on my terms, so answer the damn question,' he doesn't quite snap but obviously isn't being very patient about it, either.

Connor's LED is predominantly on yellow now. 'You took...Cole, to the park a lot. The one near Ambassador Bridge,' he starts off slowly, as if weighing his words carefully to make sure they don't sit heavily between them. 'You played with him on the see-saw, spun him around on the merry-go-round, pushed him on the swings and caught him at the bottom of the slide,' he pauses, gaze drifting back down to the photograph before snapping back up to Hank's. 'You hated the sandbox because it got everywhere but you played with him anyway.'

He snorts, 'Just because I hate the sand doesn't mean Cole should be deprived of the experience.'

'Yes.'

He remembers the park fondly, although he never visits it anymore. The last park he even went to was that little slice of greenery with the lonely twin swing set. He remembers Connor sitting on one of them, gently swinging back and forth with his legs, hands on his lap and looking lost and unsure of himself. Hank wonders if it was part of an old line of coding floating around in his systems or something deeper, like a sense of nostalgia he can't quite name.

'What else do you remember?'

'The jungle gym. I--' he snaps his jaw shut for a moment before continuing, looking down at his lap, 'Cole fell off and scraped his knees but you helped him up, told him it's just a scratch and promised to get him some bandages later. You asked him if he wanted to keep trying with the monkeys bars or play something else once he calmed down.'

He snorts at the memory as he looks down at Cole again. They'd gone to the pharmacy after that and Cole had picked some dinosaur-themed band-aids. He probably still has the box somewhere in the garage tucked away with the rest of his CyberLife knick-knacks that he'd been meaning to throw out but could never quite get himself to go through with it. 'You know, I think I actually forgot about that. Guess I blocked it out,' he adds shamefully. It's not that all of his memories at CyberLife were bad, it was just easier not having to miss something if you don't remember it.

'It is not uncommon for people to block out certain memories to protect themselves,' Connor tells him softly.

'The one thing I hated most after they took him away from me was that they changed his face,' he growls out but finds the anger dissipating as quickly as it came. 'But I guess that's a good thing; I don't have to see Cole in every YK400 model I come across.'

He looks up when he sees Sumo paddling his way towards them, huffing for attention and Connor smiles as he pats the dog's head and scratches behind his ears.

'You remember Sumo, then?'

'Yes, we adopted him together,' he freezes, eyes wide as he looks at Hank, desperately trying to backtrack and pull the words out of the air between them back into his mouth, 'I mean--'

'It's fine.'

'I'm not--' he looks down back at his lap, pulling his hands away from Sumo and getting a pitiful whine from the dog, his eyebrows furrowing as his LED cycles between yellow, yellow, red, yellow. 'I know I'm not Cole,' he says quietly, almost scared. 'I'm not trying to be Cole. I'm not trying to replace him.'

'I know you're not,' he sighs, feeling worn down and wondering if Kamski knew this about Connor. He thinks he probably did; he always looked too knowing and too sure of himself. 'You don't need to be him. I don't expect you to be anybody but Connor.'

It's quiet, just the sounds of Sumo's panting filling the air, the thumps of his tail hitting the ground rhythmically, the occasional scratch of his paws on the floor.

'I...I think you make a good father.'

Hank purses his lips as he looks down at the photograph, missing Cole even to this day but realizing that he still has good memories of his boy in his heart. He won't let CyberLife take those memories from him anymore, it's been 9 years too long.

'Well, this has been one roller-coaster of a day,' he sighs as he gets up, feeling hungry. He sees Connor get up with him, looking like he's ready to leave. 'You can stay if you want.'

'For tonight?' He asks as he looks into the living room at the couch Sumo always likes to sleep on.

'For as long as you want.' Hank shrugs as he looks away, feeling nervous and jittery. 

He doesn't hear a reply but when he looks at Connor again he sees a smile on his face, his LED cycling back on blue. 'I would like that, thank you.'

'Eh, shut up and come here,' he says as he takes two steps forward and pulls Connor into another hug. He feels arms encircle around him and squeezing back just as tight.

After a short while, he pulls back and holds the android by the shoulders. 'Look, I know nobody's said this but what you did on that stage? Taking yourself out to make sure other people get the chance to be free? A sacrifice like that takes guts and I'm fucking proud of you,' he says as he gives him a firm shake before tightening his grip, 'But if you ever get yourself shot again, I'm gonna repair you just so I can kick your ass to next Sunday myself, got it?'

'Got it,' he repeats, the corner of his lips quirk up in a smile even as he's being reprimanded.

Hank sighs, wondering what the hell he just signed himself up for but more than ready to take on the challenge.

**Author's Note:**

> Yay for happy endings~ =D
> 
> I also debated a lot with myself whether the story deserves the warning of Major Character Death or not. I guess it counts even though it's temporary? -SHRUGS-
> 
> Anyway, feel free to check out the other DBH stories I've dabbled in~ Hopefully something will interest you!
> 
> Thanks a lot!


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